


life is made of sobs, sniffles, and smiles

by NingenShikkaku



Category: Bleach
Genre: F/M, Original Female Character(s) - Freeform, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-07
Updated: 2015-08-07
Packaged: 2018-04-13 09:45:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4517154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NingenShikkaku/pseuds/NingenShikkaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the first time you meet his eyes, you know it will never be easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	life is made of sobs, sniffles, and smiles

**Author's Note:**

> Again, OC alert. Ichigo/Major OFC. Though it could also be read as Ichigo/Reader. Read at your own risk.

You are on your way to meet the old man who died sitting on his porch, to take care of the flowers like you’ve promised, when you see _him_ for the first time.

He is certainly handsome, a boy around your age with wild hair in the color of sunset and daylily. His brows are creased as if having a permanent frown, but his eyes are soft when he speaks to the old man.

When you leave, Karakura has one less ghost.

You don’t think of bronze eyes, soft and startled when meeting your own gaze. It’s probably your imagination anyway.

 

❄

 

You have to leave town the next week. Your mother is dead and buried, so you have to move to your grandmother’s place two towns over.

You never forget the bronze gaze and hair in the color of daylily, not really.

 

❄

 

Autumn, your first year in university, you know that his name is Kurosaki Ichigo.

His bronze gaze is curious when he asks, “Have we met?”

His eyes have aged, somehow, more than how it should in the span of a few years, by something you cannot comprehend. You still like how they go soft when he speaks of his sisters, how they widen when you tells him you can see ghosts.

“I no longer have the power to send off lingering souls, but I think I can still protect you.”

You nod to give him a reason to stay. It has occurred to you that you simply fell for him, a long time ago. You latch on and don’t let go. And Kurosaki doesn’t seem to mind.

 

❄

 

It’s spring of the next year when Kurosaki finally becomes Ichigo.

You have to admit that you aren’t in your best that afternoon; you have a late night shift at the café and you just leave your morning classes. You don’t pay attention when you cross the sidewalk. And of course there has to be a car running straight to your direction.

You barely register a flash of hair in the color of sunset and daylily, pulling you out of death’s door. Literally.

Ichigo clutches at you—too harsh to be an embrace, too desperate—as his whole frame shakes. Your grip on his shirt is also as tight.

“I thought I will lose you too,” he says, voice trembling and weak.

Your hand is surprisingly steady when you bring it to his cheek. “…I’m still here,” you say. “I’m still here.”

He waits until you both are safe behind the door of his cryptically bare apartment, before he tells you of the Winter War.

That night, he gives you his everything, lays his soul in the open, all the good, the bad, and the ugly of it. And you learn to do the same, the way you have learned to hold his trembling hands in a world that spins madly on.

“Ichigo,” you moan, and his eyes are dark as he thrusts into you faster, harder, and finally comes inside you, face buried in the crook of your neck, your legs wrapped tight around his hips. You sigh, blink back tears, and find that his fingers no longer shake when he tangles them in your hair, diving down for a kiss.

“I will protect you,” he whispers, his breath stirring soft locks that frame the shell of your right ear.

“And I will protect you,” you reply, voice firm.

He looks at you, _really_ looks at you, wonder written all over his face. You smile at him, sharp, bright, part sarcastic and part hopeful, because you still remember the Ichigo you met a long time ago, in a deserted house, remember the softness of his bronze gaze yet untainted by war and ash and blood. His responding smile is dry, but when you drift off to sleep, he keeps an arm around you, perhaps an answer to your promise.

 

❄

 

Ichigo moves in with you. He renovates and redecorates. Sometimes his tastes are questionable, but it makes the rooms livelier.

You rather like him being around. The empty house is _home_ with him inside.

 

❄

 

Ichigo forgets that he’s only nineteen, sometimes. Worse, the people around him also tend to forget.

Your blood boil knowing the issue, angry at them for burdening Ichigo with war and blood and death, angry that they couldn’t pull their heads out of the sands and fight their own damn battles. You wonder how many of them actually know that Ichigo sometimes wake up screaming bloody murder, that Ichigo sometimes scrub his hands raw and tender from _something_ , that Ichigo sometimes still flinch at the slightest crashes.

No _one_ walks out a war unscathed, and Ichigo was _fifteen_.

It takes a group of Visored for you to snap. They are so used in seeing scowls and frowns and serious looks in Ichigo’s face, and when you make him laugh, they stare as if puzzled.

Then, one of them has the gall to say, “Hey, the strawberry really could laugh!”

So you snap.

It’s never a burning inferno with you. Instead, it’s a chill, frosty anger that, as Ichigo says, can put even Antartica’s coldest winter to shame. You recall giving out a few choice phrases, Ichigo’s soft-sad smile, then storming away once your piece is said.

Later, Hirako Shinji comes to you.

“I know what you really have problem with, and you’re absolutely right,” the man admits, sober and looking closer to his true age. “We shouldn’t put a kid through war. Our war. He killed and bled and cried for us, and we couldn’t even make him laugh. It’s funny that we call him family.”

“Family is supposed you make you miserable,” you say, remembering what your grandmother used to say after your mother’s death. “That’s why they’re family.”

Hirako starts grinning. “Nah, there’re good things too.”

“That’s up to debate,” you shrug.

Silence falls, and it is no longer uncomfortable.

“You’re good for him.”

You blink, and for once, Hirako’s smile isn’t a Chesire smile.

“Take care of him.”

 

❄

 

When Aizen Sousuke comes to your house, Ichigo almost take a kitchen knife to the man’s gut.

“Please, you are in danger. You have to go before they come demanding your blood, Kurosaki-kun.”

Ichigo doesn’t stop to listen, but you chase after Aizen when the man leaves, giving him the benefits of doubt.

The more Aizen speaks, the more you feel the dread.

“Kurosaki-kun’s nature has been known by Central 46, and now they want him dead. Or worse, strapped down under a microscope. I will not be surprised if they will come for _you_ too, if they know you are wearing a spiritual concealer.”

Aizen is earnest, and unlike Soul Society, he doesn’t have any reason to lie.

Your dread is proven to be true when Ichigo vanishes in the end of that week.

The whole house reeks of shinigami, and you pretend you cannot see them as you pack your things. Two of them, in gigai, escort you to Karakura, where you are ‘to remain in case of emergency’. You only spend three nights in Kurosaki residence, enough to shake the tail, before moving on to the safe house you’ve already prepared.

There, you wait.

And if you spend too many nights awake and worried and afraid, nobody should know.

 

❄

 

Unohana Retsu is a good person, something borderline terrifying in the fierceness of her compassion.  You rather not want to get on her bad side. You wonder what Soul Society has done to her, though, for her to do something like this. And she somehow understands your intention.

“Go, take him away and never come back, if you would.”

You appreciate the help, and you also appreciate Yamada Hanatarou’s presence with you as the two of you half-carry, half-dragging Ichigo’s limp form home. Or at least to the safe house. Aizen shows up midway, and you dismiss Hanatarou’s concern.

“When he came to us, Ichigo nearly knifed him. That’s why I’d rather trust him than any shinigami.”

It is thanks to Aizen you can prepare the safe house at all. Hanatarou acquiesces to your will, naivety vanishing under the weight of betrayal and war.

“You are going to leave, aren’t you?” Aizen asks, eyes sad. “You are taking him away.”

You nod. “I’ve had enough of my family getting killed by shinigami.” You smile at the two men. “You both are welcome to join, actually.”

Hanatarou bursts into tears. “Of course I’m coming!”

Aizen doesn’t reply, but he trails after you, beaming with genuine gratitude.

One snowy night, nearly a year after university graduation, you whisk Kurosaki Ichigo away from the ruins of his former life.

 

❄

 

This is how it goes, for a while.

You wake up at six-thirty every morning, Ichigo’s arms around you, limbs tangled and deliciously warm, a good-morning kiss to his forehead.

When you go downstairs to the kitchen, Sousuke is reading newspaper over his cup of green tea, and Hanatarou is busy slaving over the stove. You smile to them both before helping Hanatarou tend to your breakfast.

Ichigo ambles in around seven, bleary-eyed, daylily hair in mess of a bedhead. You smooth it over with coffee and a warm toast.

Then you have breakfast, four people making something that suspiciously feels like family. And for the first time in what feels like years, you are content.

 

❄

 

Your heart nearly stops when you see Hirako lounging by the porch one summer afternoon.

“Yo,” he calls, grin subdued and ominous.

“Here for a newsflash?” you ask, smiling in resignation.

“Not sure what you’ll make of it,” Hirako shrugs noncommittally. “There’s been a huge-ass coup over at Seireitei. More than a few captains who openly supports Ichigo versus newly-established Central 46. And man, they hold _grudges_.”

“They succeeded?”

Hirako’s grin is almost feral. “Oh yeah. Central 46 is officially disbanded for being collective corrupt asses. Soutaichou’s dead, but Kyoraku will step in soon. The sentence for Ichigo is also revoked.”

You can’t help the vicious satisfaction curling on your lips. “Good for them.”

Hirako studies you for a moment, eyes softening. “You aren’t coming back.”

“Isn’t that why you chose a time when I’ll be alone at home?”

Hirako laughs, full-blown and freer than you’ve ever seen him. “Girl, you really are _shrewd_.”

You chuckle. “That has been said.”

 

❄

 

This is how it goes, after.

You wake up at six-thirty every morning, Ichigo’s arms around you, limbs tangled and deliciously warm, a good-morning kiss to his forehead.

When you go downstairs to the kitchen, Sousuke is reading newspaper over his cup of green tea, and Hanatarou is slaving over the stove. You smile to them both before helping Hanatarou tend to your breakfast.

Ichigo sometimes rushes in at precisely seven, in his working suit, daylily hair combed as neatly as possible (it still sticks out to every direction, you sometimes wonder why he bother). Sometimes he ambles in, bleary-eyed with a lost case of bedhead. You will still greet him with coffee and a warm toast in either occasion.

Then you have breakfast, four people making a family. And like three years before, you are content.

 

❄

 

( _And if you are wearing spiritual concealer to hide your Quincy heritage and powers, nobody should ever know, aside from Ichigo and Sousuke and now Hanatarou._

_If you sometimes give out a choked cry in the middle of the night and remembering how a shinigami murdered your mother for being different, only Ichigo would know._

_If you go plotting with Sousuke and Unohana and Kyoraku about Seireitei’s eventual downfall, Ichigo knows how to turn a blind eye. There’s difference between deep-seated hope and foolish naivety, after all._

_If you eliminate random hollows and sometimes a shinigami who got the luck to cross your family’s hiding place, Sousuke knows how to patch you up while Hanatarou works on smoothing Ichigo’s frown._

_You can do all those, and it’s nobody’s business. It’s just like picking out bad beans to make a good cup of coffee._ )

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment on your way out...


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